


Two nations

by jauneclair



Category: Black Sails
Genre: (sort of), Canon What Canon?, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, I haven't seen 4x04 yet so who knows, M/M, Multi, babies ever after, let's ignore Treasure Island for a few moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9889937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jauneclair/pseuds/jauneclair
Summary: He finds James sitting in the front room with John's child in his arms.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I still need to watch 4x04, not that it really matters (because this is shameless, shameless non-canon compliant fluff). Just a short, perhaps slightly silly little drabble. Not beta read, so all mistakes are my own.

John Silver returns to the tavern he owns in Bristol late one evening. Late in more than one sense of the word. The front room is empty at this hour, except for a lone figure in a chair by the banked fire.

He finds James sitting in the front room with John's child in his arms.

John shakes off the sea, or as much of it as he can, now; it is not so much the life on the water that clings to him like the salt does to his curls, but his persona. The other him, the man he is when he's far from here. He takes a tentative step forward, but James is never one to be caught off-guard, even as his beard has filled with grey.

In the flickering light, John sees the man he used to call Captain raise his head, smile, and shift the sleeping babe in his arms so that he may beckon John over with a hand.

The crutch makes it near impossible to tread over carefully, but John manages it without waking the child. He plunks himself down on a stool, his right knee brushing against the outside of James' left. He peers down into this bundle of swaddling cloth and scrunched-up flesh.

"Huh," he pronounces.

"It's a boy." A corner of James' mouth twitches up, as if he knew this was the answer to the question that John hesitated to ask.

"A boy," John repeats. He stares some more. It is not often that he is left speechless.

James' free hand, broad, still calloused from a life at sea, falls upon John's left knee. It rests there, gently massaging his tired flesh.

"He has your eyes." John looks: it's true. James continues: "And hopefully his mother's everything else."

A hand clenches around his heart for a moment. "Where is she?"

"Resting." The air of good humor surrounding James seems to recede, like the flickering shadow on the wall opposite the hearth instead of the warm flame itself. "John…"

"I know. Fuck, I know!" He closes his eyes. "I promised her."

The hand on his knee pauses, squeezing for a moment. "You'll apologize and make it up to her."

"Profusely." John's eyes are lowered to where his own hand has joined James' on his knee, their fingers twined. He darts a glance at James through his lashes - the other man is staring once more into the face of John's son. "And you? Are you angry?"

James' eyes flicker down for a moment; he's thinking, but his pose shifts as the baby wriggles in his arms. James seems unconscious of the movement.

His former captain's eyes come back to rest on his. They are soft, and happy, and a little sad at the same time. But he smiles, gently.

"I don't blame her for being so," James says. "But as for myself - I know many things about regret."

He's right, of course - about himself, about the way John already misses what he missed. How he envies the instinct that James has already developed towards the child. John leans forward, the crutch hitting against the floor, and he isn't sure how he'll manage, but he trusts James of all people to guide him.

"Will you show me?" he asks, reaching forward to place a hand on top of the child's head, which is supported by the bend of James' elbow. 

The other man merely smiles, leaning forward to close the distance between them. They kiss, the two of them, sitting with their son held carefully between them.

Madi arrives and - well. There is another child in her arms, sleeping. 

"John Silver," his wife says, and, "you're late."

Until the moment that Madi had embraced him when her father was dying - for her own comfort, but as it also turned out, what would be his, too - John had not truly known what it was to be so close to another human being as to care for them. To love them. Then one day, he and Madi kissed for the first time, and his heart learned again. And then on another day, James had kissed him, and his heart thought it was done growing and learning.

His heart, it turns out, has been an untrustworthy bastard.

He is quiet for so long that James says, "I think we've finally broken him."

In a lesser woman, the sound that his wife makes might be called a snort.

"We haven't given them names," she says. "We were waiting for you."

"Jacob and Esau are out, then?" John can't help himself, sometimes. Not with these two. 

Though they're not just three anymore. It hasn't quite hit him yet.

"Don't be such a shit," James says, though the corners of his mouth turn up.

"Don't use such language in front of my sons," Madi retorts.

John says, "I want to hold both of them at once."

Madi shakes her head, but it is more fond than angry. He won't forget that he needs to make things right with her - soon. But for now….

"Back not five minutes," she says, "and you are already getting greedy. Come into the bedroom and we will all lay down together."

As they tow him along, he adds, "What can I say? I see an opportunity, and I take it."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated :) 
> 
> I'm on tumblr @ [jaune-clair](http://jaune-clair.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to talk Black Sails.


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